Connecting wireless devices through my 2Wire i3812V﻿ router

I'm having major problems connecting wireless devices through my 2Wire i3812V router. I've been unplugging and rebooting the router several times a day for the last several days -- after returning from vacation -- absolutely not the quality of service I expect from AT&T.

The router's console LAN->Status page, in the "Interfaces" section, shows two active and two inactive devices on the wired router, and zero active zero inactive on the wireless. In the "Devices" section, with inactives hidden, it shows three wired and two wireless. The two wireless are the Wii and an older Gateway laptop.

When I show inactive devices, I have an additional nine wireless devices -- a wi-fi printer, several iPhones, and a couple more laptops. None of these devices can connect to the wireless network. I've restarted devices, restarted the router via the web UI, and pulled the power cord on the router... Most of the time, whichever device I'm working on, will eventually work, and I'll go on about my business, only to have someone complain an hour or two later that such-and-such other device isn't working.

My iPhone at the moment is getting a 169.254.x.x address when it tries to connect to wi-fi -- which from what I can tell means that the DHCP server is not supplying an address. Why not? I've rebooted the iPhone, and restarted the 2Wire router... what's the problem?

I just now turned off the wifi on my iPhone and turned it back on -- it again came back with the 169.254 address. I refreshed the event log and system log on the router's webUI -- there are no messages about a DHCP failure.

While I was writing this, my wife turned on her iPhone and her iPad -- both devices seem to be working over the wifi, but only the iPhone shows up as an active device on the router's webUI. The iPad still shows up as "not connected" or "off" depending on which list I look at. I forgot and re-connected the wi-fi on my iPhone; it still claims to connect but fails to receive a DHCP address.

Any suggestions how to troubleshoot this? I'm really scratching my head over this one...

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

Hello kjdunphy,

Thank you for contacting us about this issue through the forums and I apologize for the inconvenience that you have experienced. Thank you for also sharing to us a detailed information about your wireless issue.

There are connectivity issues that can be resolved just by merely rebooting (Unplug/Replug) your device. We appreciate all the basic troubleshooting steps you did. However, this problem with your wireless connection may have something to do with other devices(e.g Wireless phones, Halogen Lamps, Alarm Systems, Baby Monitors, Heart Monitors, etc.) causing interference to your wireless signal or this may have something to do with the settings of your 2wirei3812V router. To be sure that this is not caused by any interference of these electrical devices, please keep your modem at least two(2) feet away from those possible devices I mentioned above.

Regarding the settings of your 2wirei3812V router, please make sure to set your 2wire wireless network's "Wireless channel" to 11 (2462 MHz) and your "Power Setting" to ten(10). Keeping these two settings on your 2wire modem will guarantee a very good connection to your wireless network.

Most often ,when a device is getting a "169.X.X.X" IP address, this is caused by a wrong password. But if the other devices(e.g. Laptop, Iphone, Ipad, Ipod, Wii, etc.) are able to connect to your wireless network using the same password except for one specific device, the problem could be with the it's wireless adapter. If the problem is with it's wireless adapter, we need you to have your device checked by bringing it to the store where you bought it or contact their technical support.

If the problem persists, you can engage with a tech support representative during a live chat session. Simply click on the link below to be redirected to the chat page.

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

"Regarding the settings of your 2wirei3812V router, please make sure to set your 2wire wireless network's "Wireless channel" to 11 (2462 MHz) and your "Power Setting" to ten(10). Keeping these two settings on your 2wire modem will guarantee a very good connection to your wireless network."

I have seven other WLAN's within range of my laptop right now -- why do I want to fix my router to a particular channel rather than allow it to locate a clear frequency? And why channel 11? One of the other nearby WLAN's is named "2wire298", which makes me suspect that AT&T might also recommend to that person to fix on channel 11... It seems that would cause performance problems for both of us, if we're both fixed to the same channel... no?

Also, I don't have a power setting for 10mW -- I have 10 choices ranging from 25mW to 400mW -- it's currently fixed on 400mW - I presume that's what you meant, right?

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

Good day Sir,The 2wire router will always use a fixed channel when it broadcasts ( depending on what is set ). Most 2wire routers have channel 1 or 6 set as the default. The recommended channels are 4, 9 and 11 since those channels are less used. You are actually free to choose the channel that will work well with your location and you may need to experiment with this, considering that you have other 2wire networks in range. As for your issue with your wireless connection, it could be an issue with your wireless signal being interfered by other wireless networks in your area so changing the channel would be recommended.

As for Power setting, it refers to how strong the signal will be broadcasted. If you already have it set at maximum then that's good.

Also you have to consider that everytime you make changes to your wireless settings like the wireless password, the encryption type or authentication type (WEP, WPA etc.) and turn on/off wireless security, you will need to update your devices with those changes. Although changing the channel, Power setting will not affect the already connected devices.

Once you connect to your wireless network succesfully the device that connected will save a profile of your network so that the next time you connect you won't have to re-enter the password and it will just connect automatically. If the wireless settings have been changed and the settings saved on the profile on the device does not match your current wireless settings, it will be denied access. If it was connected when the change was made it will get disconnected and sometimes stay on for awhile then get disconnected. And sometimes you get errors like "limited or no connectivity" on most windows based computers, as for Apple devices it will either say "no Internet connection" or like what you stated above, will only receive a 169.X.X.X ip.

To save you the trouble of going through the updating of each device with the new wireless settings, you simply need to delete the saved profile. For your iPhone and iPad, that means you need to forget your 2wire's network. For computers, you need to delete your 2wire network's name from the Preferred networks list. Once deleted, you will notice that the device will ask you for the wireless password again when you reconnect. Once you have successfully reconnected it will save a new profile with the new wireless settings.

One other thing you need to check (though this may less likely be cause of the problem) is your DHCP setting. Hopefully you have your 2wire set to use the Default DHCP pool. If you have configured it manually, you will need to check the range you have set because that will limit the number of devices that the 2wire will allow to connect at a time, causing other devices to disconnect when another new device connects. That is if the number of devices that are connecting have exceeded the number of devices allowed.

Example: if the 2wire was set to use an ip pool of 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.2, which means two devices are allowed to connect at a time because it is only limited to assign two ip addresses to the devices that will connect to it.If two devices are already connected, and you connect another device, the router will give one of the ip addresses to that newly connected device and disconnect the other one that was using it.

Although I think this issue mainly has something to do with your router, you will also need to check your wireless devices to see if they can still connect to other networks just to test if they're working properly.

Feel free to reply if you need more clarification or you may contact us through the available contact options below:

For DSL customers, you may contact us via chat by clicking the link below:

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

Thank you, thank you thank you I have been trying to fix my netflix connectivity issues ( can't connect to the internet, slow loading, connection drops, with no success all week. It's been making me nuts!

I clicked on the link and read through the suggestions. Here's what I did: I changed the wireless channel from auto to 11 and changed the wireless mode from b/g to g.

I do have a wireless phones, laptops, and a cordless phone in the same room as the internet ready wireless DVD player.(LG BD390) . These suggestions were recommended for getting a good signal with minimal interference.

Yay!!!! It's been so difficult to find information on how to troubleshoot and then I came across this.

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

I was able to set up my 2Wire router with settings that will do all of my connections perfectly. I power off all of my equipment every night to save power and for security. The first month, all settings were saved, but lately, it loses all of the settings I have set and I have to reprogram the router every morning at power-up.

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

I have been fighting with this 2 wire router modem for a stable connection. I recently bought a ZOOM X6 DSL modem and all the problems have been sold. I belive the main issue is the suppresed internal antena wirings. The manufacturer need to looking into the internal structure. Even AT&T does not want to take back this modems. I have 8 of them sitting my home. They keep dumping on me. I do not know AT&T know this problem or not.No matter what you do it will not fix the issues. One ATT&T tech support guy told me " sir,your internet is working with wired configuration. So nothing is wrong with modem.Something is wrong with the computer system".

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

I had this problem as well with the 2wire channel/frequency issue --- I just used a wireless monitor (You could use a free one like wirelessnetview) and discovered that there was a large number on channel 11 as well ( changed mine to 11 based on the techs entry earlier in this post).. Once I was able to determine what channel remained unused I went back into the 2wire device and made the necessary changes.

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

I read your support and it sort of touched on my issue too with my 2Wire modem. I have Fiber Optic service using 2wire modem and for some reason I get limited IP addresses. We have 2 iPhones, a Wii, Xbox, three computers, an iTouch, iPad, and Blue Ray, are all connected to the modem; some wired and other wirelessly. I have the DHCP pool as default as you mentioned, my channel is on Auto and right now is set to 10, the allocated is 19, wireless power level to 400mW.

I tried everything but it keep happening and the modem is also fairly new.

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

I had the same connection problem with my Uverse wireless ever since I got it installed two years ago. I had to manually set all of my wireless devices to static ip addresses when ever I was at home. For some reason auto or DHCP does not connect. I have spent many of nights searching online forums for a fix. I recently found a post on a Android forum that suggested adding my MAC address to the Allowed Wireless MAC address filter on the 2Wire router. Bingo! Now all my wireless devices are working, on DHCP.

Re: 2Wire router does not connect wireless devices

My experience and what has worked for me. I've had issues with the 2Wire router as well. When I first started the Uverse internet service all my devices connected correctly. Then a month or so later my phones (androids) and an xp pc would not connect to the router. My phone would just go in a cycle obtaining IP address and scanning and never connected. It obviously ran down my battery trying to do that. The XP desktop got the 169.254.x.x ip address (no IP address from DHCP server, etc.) I was definitely typing the wifi key correctly but still nothing, it just showed the limited connectivity icon on the pc. A Win 7 laptop worked fine and never lost connection. All these devices are wireless devices. I would just unplug the power to the router and plug it back in and it fixed the problem but it became a nuisance when I had to do it every 3 days or so. So I called AT&T. They sent a tech and he just changed the router. It worked fine for some time three weeks or so but the same started happening again. I looked on forums here and Android phone forums but it all pointed back to the router. I changed the wireless channel and the power but still nothing worked. So again I called AT&T and again they just sent a tech in and he just replaced the router. Again it worked fine when installed but later it just wouldn't allow my phone and other devices on. (I also noticed things got complicated when other devices were introduced. When family stayed over, their iPad, iPhone would connect for a little bit but after a day or so the router wouldn't allow them on. (When you have people over and their devices just don't get wifi it's just an embarrasing nuisance and you can imagine what impression they get from Uverse internet service.) For my phone it seemed like it happened when I left the wifi area and then came back to it, as in when I went to work and then came back home. So I kept restarting the router to solve the problem (and when you call AT&T and tell the techs the situation, guess what they say, "have you restarted the router?" yeah that solves the problem for this time but that doesn't fix the overall issue when you have to restart the router every three days, as a customer I shouldn't have to be doing that.

I continued searching the forums. I saw on my Android phone that after it tried to connect, under settings wireless, it would say, "Disabled, WPS available, secured with WPA/WPA2 PSK" So I tried to use the WPS which is another form of initializing a connection with the router, it has the push button feature, where you have to push the button when your phone or device is first trying to connect to the router. Tried that but nothing, tried WPS with the PIN but still nothing. I kept trying a few things, including changing wireless channels, without restarting the router but just changing the router settings through the browser interface. Then I looked at what other Security encryptions are available. I found that the security on the router (under Settings> LAN> Wireless> Security> Authentication Type) defaults to WPA-PSK (TKIP) and WPA2-PSK (AES). I changed the security to WPA2-PSK (AES) only and my phone connected then and there. I believe this has solved my issue for now but I think that if the power goes out or the router is reset for another issue I will start having issues again. I guess only time will tell. I hope this helps someone having the same issue of devices not connecting. What bothers me is that none of the techs know to check that, or test it by changing it, when someone says there are wireless issues with the router, it should be on the checklist. I'm hoping when someone calls in with 2wire wireless issues, they ask about the security encryption settings as another check point item. It would have saved two extra trips and two router setups by tech's who don't know what to check. Again hope this helps someone.